With regard to the third objection, no estimate of the future expense can (from the nature of the subject) be grounded upon any authority better than that of opinion. The price of common Watches, where each part is made by a different workman, bears no proportion to what must necessarily be charged by any man who was to make the whole with his own hands: the same reduction will naturally take place when a number of workmen are instructed to make the different parts of these. My opinion is, that they might in a very few years be afforded for about £100 a piece,[1] and if a reduction
- ↑ It appears that so far back as 1755 (above six years before the Timekeeper was sent to sea) he had given the fullest consideration to the means of effecting a modification of the successful Watch (as it afterwards proved) for to have discovered the Longitude, unless the machine was brought within a reasonable price, would have left the business but half done, in his estimation. The minutes of a Board, June 19th, in that year, vindicate his solicitude on this most interesting point. They inform us 'that his third machine is now nearly perfected, save only in what further relates to its adjusting, which he hopes may be completed by next spring (the appointed time) and proposing, if he can be enabled so to do, to make two Watches; one of such a size as may be worn in the pocket, and the other bigger, while his machine is adjusting; having good reason to think, from the performance of one already executed according to his direction (though not brought to
an item of, is easily traced in the Journal of the two Harrisons, and wants no voucher; for when the Claimant would have conformed to the new Act the best he could, every delay and obstruction that ignorance or hatred could devise was thrown in his way.
